The Management Team
Alston Gardner, Chairman
Alston Gardner was the founder and Chief Executive Officer of OnTarget, Inc., a sales training and consulting firm serving technology companies such as IBM, Xerox, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Siemens, and Deutsche Telekom. Siebel Systems acquired OnTarget in 2000. He has been involved in a number of start-ups including Fulcrum Ventures Partners, Hatteras Venture Partners, Bandwidth.com, Biopheresis, MarketingCentral, and Compliance 360. Alston graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1977. He teaches in the MBA and BSBA programs at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and currently serves on the UNC Board of Trustees.
David Ryan, Chief Executive Officer
David was co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of MarketingCentral, the leading SaaS provider of marketing resource management (MRM) tools. Unica acquired MarketingCentral in 2007. Prior to MarketingCentral, David served as Chief Executive Officer of CAS Americas, Inc. David was founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sirius Systems, a pioneer in the sales force automation industry. Sirius Systems was acquired by Software Artistry (Tivoli) in 1997. He also held sales positions at Gartner and IBM.
David is Chairman of BirdingBirds, parent of Barnstorm Wholesale, a manufacturer and wholesaler of upscale garden decor. David serves on the board of ProjectedPerformance and several Atlanta-based SaaS start-ups. David is a graduate of Duke University.
Clayton Whitfield, Vice President Solutions
Clayton is responsible for solution development and delivery. He has more than 10 years of software development and software development management experience with extensive background in multiple methodologies and technologies.
Prior to SaaSOptics, Clayton served as Vice President of Product Development at Marketing Central. There he led the development of their market leading SaaS marketing automation solution. Prior to MarketingCentral, Clayton led technical teams at Fair Isaac Corp and ACS-inc. Before moving into technology, Clayton was a teacher for the Los Angeles School District and an accomplished actor.